This report on Adventure must be very worrying for people living near the Thames.

A representative of Thames Water, the company responsible for water supply and sewage processing in the Thames area in the UK, has stated that "We're not responsible for letting the public know whether they can swim in the rivers or not. That's up to them". We are not talking about people swimming in the river as it flows through central London (that stretch of the river hasn't been safe for swimming for decades) but about further upstream, where many people live in river-front houses and areas nearby.

Due to discharge from sewage processing plants on the Thames, there are very high levels of harmful bacteria and viruses in the water, in some cases up to 4,000 times higher than safe levels. The company claims that the discharges are within the levels allowed by their storm permit for the treatment works.

Leaving aside the disgrace represented by the storm permits themselves, whereby the government has made dangerous levels of pollution legal for Water Companies, in what world do they not have any responsibility to notify the public about health hazards? I contrast this situation in the UK with what we have here in Germany, where local governments (who are often also responsible for water supply and sewage processing) regularly issue warnings when swimming in lakes and rivers is considered unsafe.

The only good thing I can say about this is that, at least, it is not as bad as the scandal of lead pollution in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan.

This piece on Associated Press (AP) News reports that the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is toughening up emission standards for "Heavy-Duty Vehicles". The standards for this class of vehicles hasn't been toughened since 2016 (8 years ago!). It is worth noting that the EPA's original proposals were watered down, for certain in response to industry lobbying.

The USA is heavily dependent on trucks for shipping goods across the nation; hardly anything is transported by train. This was brutally brought home to me in the last year, when I saw the outrageous number of trucks on the road on our trip from Chicago to Ohio for the funeral of Sheryl's father. Other countries make much better use of their rail networks for shipping goods. This is caused by the relatively lower cost of road transport, caused in turn by the ridiculously low price of fuel.

My real question is, why has it taken the EPA so long to act? I understand that, during the Trump presidency, the EPA were not allowed to toughen environmental regulations, but there have since been nearly 4 years of the Biden presidency, during which the EPA could have taken steps.

Does the EPA not understand that our planet has an environmental crisis? Swift and drastic action is needed. There is also a sound economic justification for tougher emissions standards ("over the next three decades ... $13 billion in net benefits in the form of fewer hospital visits, lost work days and deaths").

Stop messing around and do your job!

This article on Science Alert reports on a small study conducted in Italy which showed microplastics in "more than 50% of plaques from clogged arteries".

The article also reminds us that microplastics are now found in human placentas.

"In the study, patients with microplastics in their excised plaques were twice as likely to have experienced a stroke, non-fatal heart attack or died from any cause after 34 months than people who had no detectable microplastics in the plaques that surgeons had removed."

We desperately need to find a way to manage without plastics. That, however, will not be enough - we need to start getting plastics out of our environment. If we don't, we are likely to start seeing spikes in health problems, including death, due to plastic getting into our bodies.

The argument that rich people are causing disproportionate environmental problems is proven by these two articles:

• Barron's reports that the world's richest 1% emit as much carbon as the poorest two-thirds of the population. This is extreme, and there are growing calls for progressive tax rates for richer people to redress the balance.
• Making the same point more personally and explicitly is this report on Reckon News, about 7 rich and powerful people who sacrificed the environment (our environment!) for wealth and power. The list of 7 people contains all the usual suspects (except, surprisingly, Elon Musk); the unusual member of the list is US Democratic senator Joe Manchin, who is not super rich like the others, but who has repeatedly blocked environmental initiatives in the USA because of the dependence of his constituency on coal mining.

If the richest 1% are creating the same carbon emissions as the poorest 67%, then we can solve the climate crisis just by forcing them to cut their emissions by half. It won't solve the problem overnight, but it will eventually.

People who control so much of the world's wealth have, anyway, a duty to take the lead in saving or planet; when those same people are directly responsible for causing the environmental crisis in the first place, it is time to force them to do the right thing.

This BBC report shows the parlous state of the Amazon river, one of the largest in the world, with many shocking photos.

The Amazon river provides food, water and transportation for many people living on and near to the river.

If the river dies, then the Amazon rainforest, already severely reduced and degraded, will also die. That would be the beginning of the end for our world.

This report on inews describes one climate scientist's view that society will completely collapse by 2050. He is so convinced of this that he has made preparations, including relocating his family and making his home proof against some of the consequences of such a collapse.

I have written several posts about societal collapse in this thread of this blog: in summary, everything from law enforcement and government services, though supplies of food and water, to the banking system are likely to fail.

One of the things that I and others have predicted is major water shortages, resulting in wars over access to water. Such problems are precisely what is going on in France right now, as reported here on Foreign Policy. Several parts of the USA have, or recently had, severe water shortages, with tensions between private consumers, industry and agriculture; between government and native American tribes; between different states in the USA; and between the USA and Mexico (over the usage of water from the Colorado River). There are water shortages all across Europe. The Panama canal has so little water that traffic through the canal has been limited, which is impacting availability and prices of internationally traded food.

On the financial side, the Daily Mail reports "staggering losses" by a gold-plated pension scheme. There have been bank collapses this year in the USA. Some nation's currencies have major problems; the Turkish Lira, for example, is in free-fall. There is enormous international concern because of some company collapses (e.g. Evergrande) in China (once an economic powerhouse).

Bearing all the above in mind, total societal collapse by 2050 seems somewhat optimistic. The early stages are happening now.

Electrek reports statistics about Earth Overshoot. These are statistic of which I was previously unaware, but really bring home how badly we have messed up.

Earth Overshoot Day is the day in each year by which we have used up 100% of the resources that become available each year, and is currently the 2^nd of August, but getting earlier each year. Another way of looking at this is that each year we are currently using 170% of the resources that the earth provides each year: clean air and water, forest products, fertile soil, pollination, fisheries, land use, etc. The graph to the right puts that all into focus.

In other words, we are living on an overdraft. This obviously cannot continue.

This BBC story is worrying enough anyway, but highlights some downright dishonesty by Bayer, the maker of Imidacloprid (a Neonicotinoid pesticide).

A Bayer spokesman said "Neonicotinoids have gone through an extensive risk assessment which has shown that they are safe to the environment ...".

No, Mr. spokesman, that is not what science does; science cannot do that. Science can show that some things are not safe. In the absence of proof that things are not safe, it is assumed that they are safe, but being safe is not proven. Recent history is littered with examples of things that were assumed to be safe, but were later shown to be unsafe (DDT and Agent Orange are a couple of notorious examples). Many medicines that were tested (in extensive clinical trials) and used to treat patients, were later withdrawn because they were shown to be dangerous (due to side-effects) or simply ineffective.

The pharmaceutical and pesticide industries are science based, and I find it hard to believe that companies. like Bayer, in these industries do not understand what science can and cannot do: the difference between not proving something is unsafe, and proving that it is safe. So, how about a bit more honesty from such companies? Otherwise the public will start to think you are as bad as Big Tobacco.